2016 – A Poetic Year

As promised to myself two years ago - to buy one book every month every year, this year has been fantastic with a total of 35 books and indeed very poetic with 50% of the books being those of poetry - from classic to contemporary, from love and longing to erotica and despair. 
In 2006, one for my faculty at NID had given me a feed back saying - "...learn to be poetic". Now, after 10 years I know what it actually meant and that life is beautiful and we have to make it more beautiful.  

The year started by reading Crafts of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh by Jaya Jaitley and ended by adding a biggest book to my library- Michelangelo: Complete works. This book is so huge that it fits neither in the book shelf at studio nor in the one at home – precisely explains why this book is about Michelangelo!

Now when I have listed out the books, I see that each book has a story associated, a story about me - my state of mind and work at that time of the year. 

It’s so beautiful to review ones year this way!

It has been a wonderful year –

from travelling across the country to making a home by the hills

creating huge art to developing minute skills
meeting old friends to not making new

reading books to learning music

falling in love to writing poetry

So here is the list of books added to my library this year: 

Poetry

1.      Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing (April)

2.      The Book of Questions – Pablo Neruda (April)

3.      I swallowed the Moon: The poetry of Gulzar (May)

4.      Essential Haiku (May)

5.      Kabir: Ecstatic Poems (June)

6.      Lullabies – Lang Leav (July)

7.      Love and Misadventure – Lang Leav (July)

8.      Memories – Lang Leav (July)

9.      Bitter Sweet Love – Micheal Faudet (August)

10.   Erotic Poems – Goethe (September)

11.   The Inability of Words – Harnidh Kaur (September)

12.   Milk and Honey – Rupi Kaur (September)

13.   Mouthful of Forevers – Clementine Von Radics (September)

14.   Chasers of the Light – Tyler Knott Gregson (October)

15.   Sylvia Plath - The Collected Poems (October)

16.   The Universe of Us – Lang Leav (November)

17.   Bitter Sweet Love – Michael Faudet (November) 

Art and Design

1.      Crafts of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh – Jaya Jaitley (January)

2.      World Textiles: A Sourcebook (January)

3.      I Saw a Peacock with a Fiery Tail – Urveti, Ram Singh (February)

4.      10 books of illustrated short stories – K.G. Subramanian (March)

5.      The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images (June)

6.      Mudras of India: A Comprehensive Guide to the Hand Gestures of Yoga and Indian Dance (June)

7.      Basketry: A world Guide to Traditional Techniques (July)

8.      Slow Stitch: Mindful and Contemplative Textile Art (September)

9.      Michelangelo: Complete Works (December)

Reading (assorted)

1.      Concerning the Spiritual in Art – Wassily Kandinsky (January)

2.      Creative Confessions – Paul Klee (February)

3.      Blank Canvas – Prabhakar Barve (February)

4.      My Gita – Devdutt Pattanaik (February)

5.      Love Letters of Great Men (March)

6.      Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka (June)

7.      Business Sutra – Devdutt Pattanaik (September)

8.      Vishwakarma’s Children – Jaya Jaitley (September)

9.      A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf (October)

for the love of books

Part of my design book shelf

“Why have you stopped blogging?”, is a question I am asked often.  It feels very stupid to say that I don’t find enough time. Well today, I have pulled out time to share my systematically planned love for books :)

Whenever I tell someone that I bought this particular book, the first reaction is – Oh! Books are so expensive! Then I think, isn’t buying a car, expensive? Isn’t Prada or a Gucci expensive? Isn’t a body shop product expensive? Then why exclamations only for books?!

You change your car when it gets old, but old books are rare treasures. You need to take care of your branded products, but books take care of you. Books never get over; in turn they keep filling you up. Then, I am also asked questions like why books when all information is available on the internet? Better leave the question, unanswered! How shall I explain that a book is an experience and cannot be browsed on the internet!

I was never a good reader nor am I one today. But I enjoy reading. And recently I have started enjoying it more. It is kind of magical. It is like love. Like Maurice Sendak says:

“A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.”

This is what exactly the books have done to me.

I started making my own little library since 2007. I would buy 1 or 2 books a year from my saving. This little library took a pause for a few years when paying bills would take up every bit. Then things started taking shape and it was time to focus on my library. As Rome was not built in a day, similarly a library needs years of hardwork and passion. It needs a systematic plan of investment. Since more than a year now, I have made it a point to buy one book every month. One thing I learnt differently from the SIP’s or the EMI’s is that an SIP for books is definitely exciting and enriching one! It is an investment where you get unlimited returns forever.

Past year, I have mostly bought design books – textile design in particular. Few I have purchased from the fountain market, few from flipkart/amazon and few from craft exhibitions. Few books I already had in mind since my studies at JJ and NID and few are the ones I stumbled upon client’s desk.

With Picasso, Dali, VanGogh and Klimt already on shelf, art is a completely different treasure to explore. And now my wishlist of books is never ending.

“So many books, so little time.”

-        Frank Zappa

This is so true!

In 2013, I happened to attend a poetry reading session at the Kalaghoda festival where contemporary poets like Ranjit Hoskote, Jerry Pinto, Mustansir Dalvi, Christine Herzer and many more read their poetry. I never knew poetry would be so much more magical! Since then, I have explored a bit of Neruda, Gibran and few Indian anthologies. I love getting lost in Neruda’s …

Here is an excerpt from love sonnet xvii:

I love you without knowing how, or when or from where,

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love

except in this form, in which I am not nor are you,

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.